Britain’s railway boom of the 1840s was one of the first great infrastructure investment manias. Cheap money, rapidly falling construction costs, and the extraordinary success of the early railways triggered a frenzy of new companies and speculative investment. Thousands of miles of railway lines were proposed, often before there was any clear evidence that the traffic would justify them.
The boom peaked around 1845, followed by a sharp collapse in railway share prices and a brutal shakeout. Many proposed lines were abandoned, while the strongest companies survived and built much of the railway network that transformed Britain’s economy.
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